Four Extra Words
by 1nf1n1ty
Summary: "So your wish isn't to kill me?" "No, it's not." There was a pause. "Then what is it?"
1. Four Extra Words

Two onmyouji stood on the Rainbow Bridge, under a pentagram-shaped kekkai.

"The Kamui of the Dragons of Earth told me," said Seishirou, as he removed his shades, "that your wish is something only I can grant. However…" Seishirou caught the fluttering end of the bandage that was unraveling from Subaru and brought it close to his lips. "…he also said that it's not what I think it is. So… your wish _isn't_ to kill me?"

Subaru gazed steadily back at him, their right eyes identical. "No. It's not."

There was a pause as the bandage fell free and drifted away.

"Then what is it?" Seishirou inquired.

"What do you care?" Subaru demanded.

"I'm just curious."

"You'll grant it soon enough."

"Tell me what it is first."

"Why?"

"Because I want to know."

"Why?"

"Are you five?!" Seishirou snapped.

"No. _I_ want to know why the Sakurazukamori cares about my wishes."

"Like I said, I'm curious."

"And like I said, you'll see what it is when you grant it."

Seishirou frowned. He was getting nowhere… so he tried a different tack. "Is it to kill someone else?"

"Why would I want to kill anyone else?"

"Does it have _anything_ to do with anyone else?"

"Didn't your Kamui say that it's something only you can grant?"

"I don't know if he was telling the truth."

"He was," said Subaru softly.

"So… what is it that you want me to do that _isn't_ dying by your hand?"

Subaru was silent.

"Spill the beans, Subaru-kun. I'm dying over here. Figuratively," Seishirou added.

"Only what you were supposed to do eight years ago," said Subaru at last.

"Hmm?"

"You said you would kill me… at the end of our bet… if you didn't love me." Subaru squeezed his eyes shut, as if in pain. "That kill is long overdue, don't you think?"

"You want me… to kill you?" said Seishirou slowly.

"I want you to finish what you started!" Subaru burst out. "After you revealed your cruel little charade and killed Hokuto-chan… I tried… I _tried_ to kill you in my heart. I tried to erase your existence inside me… but I _couldn't_ … I couldn't do it. Even though you can't love me… you can't feel _anything_ for me… at least… you can kill me. Trample me like dust under your feet. Break me like a twig you stepped on. Put me out of my misery. You know how to do _that_."

There was a long silence. Subaru let the bitter words hang in the air between them. He hadn't planned on saying it all, except maybe in his final moments… but surely those would come soon enough.

"I should have seen it," Seishirou finally said. "You never had it in you to kill… Your heart is far too kind for that."

"It has nothing to do with kindness! I'm not an innocent child anymore. You took that away, Seishirou-san. _Loving you_ did that to me."

Seishirou's eyes widened. The expression on the Sakurazukamori's face was undoubtedly one of surprise. "You… love me?"

Subaru nodded. Tears—tears he'd been trying to keep down, tears like the ones he'd cried when he'd first realized his feelings just before that fateful step into Seishirou's hospital room eight years ago—flooded his eyes.

"Are you sure that's what you're feeling?" Seishirou sounded supremely skeptical. "Not just clinging to the past, or even… youthful horniness?"

That made Subaru's jaw fall open. Did Seishirou just suggest that Subaru's feelings, the feelings he couldn't deny even after losing Hokuto, didn't rise above _lust_?

"Subaru-kun…"

"Yes…?"

"Do you find me sexy?"

Subaru snarled in anger. "Is that a joke?!"

"Oh, wow. _Ouch._ That, indeed, was very unkind."

Subaru sighed. "It doesn't matter if you believe me or not. You don't care anyways. What difference does it make to the Sakurazukamori, whether I love him or not? Just get it over with already."

Seishirou blinked, as if he'd forgotten why they were there. "Get what over with?"

"You owe me a long-awaited death, Seishirou-san. Or are you going to keep me waiting even longer because I'm not worth the effort it takes to kill me?"

Seishirou regarded Subaru for a long moment. Finally, he laughed softly, as if to himself. "Well… it looks like Hokuto-chan was right, after all."

"What did you say?" Subaru started at the mention of Hokuto.

"I really thought your wish was to kill me… but her wish was for both of us to live."

Subaru's eyes widened. "What?!"

"She said that I mean a lot to you. I didn't think that would still be the case after I took her life…" Seishirou chuckled. "She knows you so much better than I do."

Subaru realized that he was referring to Hokuto's last words… which only Seishirou had heard. "What did Hokuto-chan say?!" Subaru demanded. "What did she tell you?"

"That was all the important parts."

"And then you killed her?"

"In my defense, she asked for it. Literally."

Subaru couldn't say that he was surprised. Confronting Seishirou when she'd known that he was the Sakurazukamori had to have been what the other Kamui would've called a death wish. And her death had snapped Subaru out of his catatonia, which he'd assumed was her intention. But still… "Why did she ask you to kill her?"

"She… wanted to cast a spell with her death."

"What spell?"

Seishirou didn't answer. Instead, he seemed to be thinking aloud as he said, "I thought I would be granting your wish as well as my own… but it seems that's not the case… what to do, what to do…"

Subaru stared. "You thought… I wanted to kill you… that was _your_ wish? But… _why_?"

Seishirou laughed. "Oh, Subaru-kun, think for a moment… why didn't I kill you when our bet ended?"

 _You almost did,_ Subaru wanted to say. Seishirou had broken his arm, kicked him across the ground like a pebble, tried to kill him… but his grandmother had intervened. And then… and then Seishirou had let him go. Why? His grandmother couldn't have stopped the Sakurazukamori again. Why had Seishirou held off? Why hadn't he returned to take care of his unfinished business, to dispose of Subaru as quickly and casually as he would've tossed a candy wrapper into the trash? Why wait for Hokuto to approach him… with some sort of spell? And then… why go along with it by killing her? Surely the Sakurazukamori should've been suspicious about her intentions. And what _was_ the spell that Hokuto had cast on her killer? What had she wanted to accomplish with it? Could it have anything to do with…

 _He said he would kill me if I lost…_ Seishirou hadn't killed him. _He started to… but he didn't finish it… and then he let me go._

Subaru looked up. He couldn't believe it—he didn't _dare_ to believe it—but he couldn't deny what Seishirou seemed to be implying.

"Seishirou-san…" Subaru began, taking a step toward him.

"SAKURAZUKAMORI!" came a yell, and suddenly Kamui was flying down toward them, attack in hand.

"No! Wait!" Subaru ran in front of Seishirou and threw up his arms.

Kamui, shocked, de-powered his attack and twisted in midair to avoid crashing into Subaru. He landed in front of them. Arashi hopped down beside him.

"Subaru, what are you doing?" Kamui cried, alarmed. "Don't turn your back to him!"

"Oh, _please_ turn your back to me," Seishirou leaned forward and cooed into Subaru's ear.

Subaru yelped at the sudden return of Seishirou's perverted older friend persona. Kamui's jaw dropped. Arashi's eyebrows shot up. She also turned a little pink.

"Well then, Subaru-kun," Seishirou went on silkily, slipping an arm around Subaru's waist, "if you _are_ willing, I'm sure you don't want the world to end with your virginity intact…"

Subaru made an incoherent noise of protest.

"We should be leaving now!" said Arashi loudly, grabbing Kamui's arm. "Looks like Subaru-san has everything under control! Let's get out of here!"

"Wait—no—what—the—" Kamui spluttered.

"Hey! What's going on!" came Sorata's voice. Suddenly, he and Yuzuriha landed next to Kamui and Arashi. "Nothing was happening at the shrine, so we came to check on—OH MY GOD! What is going on here!" Sorata yelped when he saw the Sakurazukamori shamelessly groping Subaru from behind. He threw his hands over Yuzuriha's eyes.

"What, what, what! Is something interesting happening? I want to see!" Yuzuriha demanded.

"Seishirou-san! Not now! _Please!_ " Subaru wriggled free of Seishirou's embrace, but he held on to Seishirou's arm, as if to keep him from vanishing in a whirlwind of cherry blossoms. "Excuse me, can you give us a moment?" he said to the younger Seals.

"No problem!" said Sorata and Arashi in unison, and they wasted no time dragging off the indignant Yuzuriha and the furiously protesting Kamui.

"Seishirou-san…"

"Yes?"

Everything whirled in Subaru's head. _Why didn't I kill you when our bet ended?_ That fact was undeniable—it had been eight years, and Subaru was still alive. But what now? _Her wish was for both of us to live._ But it wasn't that simple. Seishirou was the Sakurazukamori. And he had killed Hokuto. _How can I still love my sister's killer?_ The only way Subaru could accept that fact was by wishing for his own death. He didn't deserve to be alive, much less to be happy. But Hokuto hadn't died to keep them apart… _Her wish was for both of us to live._ Even if Subaru was angry at her for sacrificing herself—even if he couldn't forgive Seishirou for taking her life—refusing to accept her final wish seemed… spiteful. It was spiteful to her. It was spiteful to himself.

"Come home with me tonight," said Subaru finally.

"Gladly," said Seishirou. He was smiling.

It wasn't a smirk. It wasn't a grin. It was the warm, happy smile of the kindly veterinarian that he had pretended to be during the year of the bet. But then, Subaru remembered that Seishirou had also smiled to see him at Nakano, when they'd met for the first time since the end of the bet, when the pretense was already over. Subaru had attacked him, forced him to defend himself, tried to provoke the Sakurazukamori into going for the kill… and Seishirou had simply fended off his attacks before disappearing, smiling the whole time.

What if it hadn't been fake?

 _Was he really… happy to see me?_


	2. Small World, Large Bed

Subaru stared at the ceiling over his bed. Seishirou was lying close beside him, utterly relaxed and utterly content. The bed would have been the perfect width for one and a half people, which was rather less than two, but in that moment it felt like the most comfortable spot in the whole world.

Had he really met Seishirou only twice since the end of the bet? It felt like Seishirou had never left in his thoughts, in his dreams, in his nightmares, and, yes, in his fantasies. Even the briefest touch could set them off and fill his mind… When they'd met at Nakano, Seishirou had caught his hand while chiding him for smoking. On the Rainbow Bridge, Seishirou had… caught his hand again, commandeered his cigarette, and… stolen an indirect kiss. Now, several hours later, they'd had much more than an indirect kiss, and… Seishirou had grabbed a lot more than his hand. Subaru felt his face flaming in the darkness, even at the very recent memory.

He tried to turn his thoughts elsewhere. As he had done so many times before, Subaru thought back to the year they had spent together. Now, with Seishirou next to him, he recalled all the questions that had passed through his mind about that time. He had figured out the answers to most of them. He knew now whose shikigami had come to his aid in Mitsuki's dream. He knew why two of the crank-calling girls—the two that he had not been able to dissuade before their attacks had overwhelmed him—had ended up insane and institutionalized. He even recalled that Seishirou had appeared in the office of the MS Institute and put him to sleep the night before Nagi Kumiko's body had been found.

"Why did you kill her?" said Subaru aloud. "She wasn't putting me in any danger. It couldn't have been because of the bet."

"Hmm?"

"Nagi Kumiko. The leader of the MS Institute. One of my jobs… that year."

"She was also one of my jobs that year," Seishirou replied.

"Why?"

"Why do you think?"

"She was building a cult… and indoctrinating young people. She was using her power for herself… to gain influence over vulnerable people… people who didn't have power and couldn't have resisted hers. But was that reason enough to kill her?"

"Given several years, her following would have been too large to call a cult."

"And someone didn't like that?"

"Some people were very displeased about that."

Subaru sighed. He wondered who it could have been. A rival cult? Maybe even a formal religious group concerned about a serious competitor? Or perhaps… a politician. An official concerned about a nefarious influence preying on the public.

 _Given a few years…_

Subaru's eyes shot open. "How do you know… what would've happened in a few years?"

A soft chuckle tickled Subaru's ear.

An official concerned about a nefarious influence preying on the public… Perhaps, an official who worked a few floors up from a dreaming princess who could see the future.

"Hinoto-hime." _Her predictions are never wrong._

Seishirou laughed. "It's a small world."

"But…"

"Oh, she wouldn't have said, 'Kill that person.' She would've warned the government about the threat, and they would've dealt with it as necessary. And sometimes… I am the necessary means of dealing with it."

Subaru's brow furrowed in the darkness.

As if sensing the movement in Subaru's facial muscles, Seishirou leaned over, and his lips brushed over Subaru's temples until the frown disappeared. "How else could they deal with a rogue magic-user like that? For that matter, Subaru-kun, what were _you_ planning to do about her, if I hadn't showed up? What _could_ you have done, if she simply refused to listen to you and stop?" Seishirou chuckled again. "Kindness doesn't work on everyone, my dearest."

Subaru's frown reappeared. There was an implication behind that statement that he didn't like. _I deal with the difficult tasks that you can't handle. I get my hands dirty so that you can keep yours clean._ Subaru reached for Seishirou's hand between their bodies, caught it, and squeezed it tight. Seishirou pulled Subaru's hand up to his lips and kissed the fingers, the palm, the back marked by his symbol. The moments ticked by as they lay there, side by side, hand in hand.

The Sakurazukamori didn't kill out of hatred or anger or the desire to see someone dead, Subaru reflected, feeling the other man's fingers between his own. He killed simply because he could, because he saw no reason not to, because it made no difference to him whether someone was alive or not. So it had been for all of Seishirou's victims… even Hokuto… but not Subaru. _A person who wasn't capable of love now is…_ Shouldn't that be a good thing, for the world to have a little more love in it? _I'm a terrible person, to be thinking such things_ …

Finally, as Subaru drifted off to sleep, he thought he heard Seishirou whisper teasingly into his ear, "Don't worry, Subaru-kun, I like your hands clean…"

 _My hands aren't clean anymore, Seishirou-san._

* * *

The next day found Subaru and Seishirou sitting at an outdoor table at a popular ice cream parlor. With all the recent devastation in Tokyo, no one even batted an eyelash at the sight of two men with an injured eye each. Seishirou was happily tucking into his hot fudge sundae. Subaru was eating his cup of mint chocolate chip in more measured spoonfuls.

"Why did you help destroy kekkai?" Subaru asked.

"Did I do that?" Seishirou chuckled softly. "I had a job at the Nakano Sun Plaza. And I had a job in Shibuya. You do know I have a job, right? And you know what it involves."

"Yes, I know," said Subaru wearily. "But you helped the other Kamui destroy the kekkai that protect Tokyo."

Seishirou shrugged and continued eating his ice cream.

"At least," Subaru went on, "you didn't hinder him or stop him…"

Seishirou looked up and arched an eyebrow. " _I_ am not the one who can stop the Kamui."

Subaru couldn't argue with that.

"Your ice cream is melting, Subaru-kun," Seishirou reminded him.

Subaru ate another spoonful. He looked around, at the momentarily peaceful scene around them. It didn't seem to belong in this Tokyo, this place where the fate of the world was being decided, where the Final Battle would soon take place on the Promised Day… His thoughts were interrupted when he spotted a familiar face.

There was Yuzuriha, bouncy and cheerful, looking up with starry eyes at her companion… a grown man who towered over her.

 _Kusanagi_ , Subaru recalled, remembering the name that Yuzuriha had let slip during their chat in his hospital room. Subaru frowned. The man looked closer to Seishirou's age than to Subaru's, and Yuzuriha was younger than Subaru had been when he'd first met Seishirou. _Maybe I'm a hypocrite,_ thought Subaru, _but this is_ really _pushing it…_

"See someone you know?" Seishirou inquired.

Subaru nodded. "One of the other Seals, with her… boyfriend. He's… older than I expected."

"Oh?" Seishirou grinned. He turned and followed Subaru's gaze to where Yuzuriha and Kusanagi were settling into their seats—just as Kusanagi looked up and glanced in their direction.

Subaru saw Kusanagi's eyes widen as they landed on Seishirou. Simultaneously, Subaru sensed Seishirou's start of surprise. Yuzuriha saw Kusanagi staring. She turned, spotted Subaru, and waved. Subaru waved back.

Seishirou turned back around. Subaru saw Kusanagi laugh and shake his head at Yuzuriha.

"He's a Dragon of Earth, isn't he?" Subaru realized.

"You Dragons of Heaven seem to have a knack for attracting us," Seishirou teased.

Subaru flushed. He shook it off for now. "Do you know anything about him?"

"Nope," said Seishirou indifferently. "I've seen him once, when we all gathered to see the other Kamui for ourselves. His name is Kusanagi, I believe. I don't think he's one of the ones who are actively destroying kekkai… though I don't always keep track of what the other Angels are doing."

"For Yuzuriha to be with him… he must be a good and kind person," Subaru surmised.

Seishirou beamed, too widely. _Unlike me,_ the expression seemed to say.

Subaru ignored this. "If he hasn't involved himself in the battle… maybe I don't need to tell her?"

"Maybe she already knows," Seishirou suggested. "But if she doesn't… If I were a Dragon of Heaven trying save the world, I would use every advantage I can get over a Dragon of Earth. Especially since you Seals seem to have considerable powers of seduction over us."

Inflamed again, Subaru's blush didn't fade as quickly. But he considered Seishirou's words. Kusanagi wasn't destroying kekkai anyway, but… _Would he join our side?_ Subaru wondered. _Would he use his powers to protect Yuzuriha?_ Another thought came as Subaru watched Seishirou polish off his sundae. _Is Seishirou-san on our side now? Would he protect me?_ But Subaru could hold his own against anyone other than the other Kamui, and nobody could protect anyone against the other Kamui.

"Subaru-kun, would you like me to continue staying at your place?" Seishirou suddenly asked.

"Yes," said Subaru immediately. The end of the world was fast approaching. _Her wish was for both of us to live._ How much longer did any of them have to live? He wanted to spend every moment left with the one he loved.

"Good," said Seishirou. "Because I've ordered a larger bed for your apartment."

* * *

Subaru visited the younger Seals at their apartment before Yuzuriha returned from her date. Kamui was studying at Keiichi's house. Sorata was preparing an extravagant dinner to show off his cooking skills and promising Arashi that he would cook for her every day if she married him. Subaru's arrival saved Sorata from a glare that could've cooked the meat by itself.

"You know, I wish we could interrogate the Sakurazukamori about the Seven Angels and the other Kamui," Sorata remarked.

"I don't know how much he can tell us," said Subaru. "We already know the other Angels' abilities from fighting them, and as for the other Kamui…"

"No one really knows what his deal is?" Sorata concluded.

Subaru nodded in agreement. "That seems to be the case."

"Hmm…" Sorata let out a laugh. "Well, anyways, a Dragon of Heaven is in a relationship with a Dragon of Earth! Who would've thought? This is better than Romeo and Juliet!"

Arashi rolled her eyes.

Subaru didn't. "You know… I'm not the only one."

The other two froze. "Huh?" said Sorata.

"The guy that Yuzuriha is seeing," said Subaru. "He's actually a Dragon of Earth."

"What!" Sorata looked alarming with a butcher's knife gripped firmly in his hand.

"He's all right," said Subaru quickly. "Seishirou-san said that he's not one of the ones who are going around destroying kekkai. And we haven't encountered him in battle, right?"

"Huh…" Sorata lowered the knife and resumed applying it to the dinner ingredients.

"Maybe we could talk to him," Arashi suggested. "Just to know where one of the Seven Angels stands. And if he can give us any hint about what the other Kamui is like…"

Sorata nodded. "We should try it. Subaru-san, any chance you can get the Sakurazukamori to join, too?"

"I'll try," Subaru promised.


End file.
